The teaching and learning of Chinese remains a fragile undertaking across all stages of Australian schooling. This paper reports on a practitioner inquiry into pedagogic practices and student engagement with disadvantaged primary school students in a Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) classroom in Sydney, Australia. Drawing upon studies of affect…

Memoirs and autobiographical writing on language learning provide perspectives on migration and residence in North America and Europe for the most part, where struggle and loss are some of the recurrent themes (Aneta Pavlenko 2001a; Besemeres 2004; Kinginger 2004a). An unaddressed aspect of foreign language learning remains the 'reverse'…

In this article we discuss how the design of a higher education language course can challenge the power of sentimentality in the classroom. In particular, the paper analyses the role of literature in intercultural language education through the lens of affect theory, while focusing on minimizing sentimentality in the classroom, especially when the…

Desuggest is the opposite of suggest. This method is used to overcome some learning problems as it puts importance on desuggesting limitations on learning. Desuggestopedia has been called an affective-humanistic approach because there is respect for students' feelings. Students do not use their full powers of learning and they have some…

A broad view of assessment development and design procedures portrays existing theories and methodologies as not fully representative of the knowledge, skills, and abilities students need to perform in the 21st century. Acknowledgement of these inadequacies has led to developments in assessment research attempting to meet contemporary expectations…

Postmemory, the narrativised intergenerational transfer of often traumatic experiences, is a crucial component of multilingual identity negotiation. In this article, we focus specifically on the curricular interactions and personal and collective aspirations of multilingual students who use English for academic purposes. We situate our discussions…

The role of the teacher's personality can be placed amongst many factors that play a role in learning English as a second/foreign language. A teacher with a humorous character inevitably aids in reducing any potential fear that may be experienced by students in relation to the learning of a second language in the classroom (Bell, 2009; Chee,…

Time factors complexly, dynamically interact with each other and with other contextualized variables in language learning. The time-tied nature of language learning is captured in what I call the "time-prism," which is the central symbol of temporality in this paper. The facets of the prism discussed in this article are (1) language…

The fundamental task of schools is to endow students with strategies, which enable them to elaborate, transform, contrast and critically rebuild knowledge, that develops strategic knowledge. Learning strategy is the specific action to make the students better in learning a second language. Learning Strategy Training is based on problems the…

Since Ecuador has determined that it wants to be fully bilingual in ten years, this paper describes the experience of a Fulbright Scholar at a university Language Center in Quito; one helping language teachers improve the language learning skills of their students. The theoretical framework for this work comes from Learner Self-Management (LSM) or…

The following is the text of the Horwood Address delivered by Associate Professor Lesley Harbon from the University of Sydney at the AFMLTA Biennial Conference in Canberra 2013. The focus of the Address is accomplished teaching of languages and cultures, known to us all through the AFMLTA's work on Professional Standards published in 2005.…

Affectivity is an important dimension in humans' social and individual lives. It is either a stimulating or hindering aspect of language learning. This article aims to draw attention to material culture as a powerful, but mostly neglected source of data on the use and acquisition of languages, and demonstrates the close and intricate links between…

As part of a research study on collaborative writing, this paper discusses defining and facilitating features that occur during face-to-face collaboration, based on the literature and research. The defining features are mutual interaction, negotiations, conflict, and shared expertise. Facilitating features include affective factors, use of L1,…

Affective factors seem to play a crucial role in success or failure in second language acquisition. Negative attitudes can reduce learners' motivation and harm language learning, while positive attitudes can do the reverse. Discovering students' attitudes about language will help both teacher and student in teaching learning process. Anxiety is…

Describes a study of a content-based instructional model that engages high intermediate English-as-a-Second-Language students in sustained content study within collaborative learning communities and uses information technology resources to hone linguistic, academic, socioaffective, and metacognitive skills through an activity called focus…